When Jeff Gordon waves the white flag, maybe it’s time to think surrender to Jimmie Johnson for the NASCAR Sprint Cup title, only Johnson says it’s too early.

Johnson won his third-straight fall race at Auto Club Speedway holding off Gordon by 1.6 seconds in a 500-mile race around the two-mile oval, it was Gordon’s eighth second place finish this year.

Exuberant in Victory Lane, after a disappointing finish at Kansas City last week, the California native who took the points lead (by 12 over Mark Martin), won’t accept Gordon’s concession.

“We've got maximum points today. But I don't want to think about those things.” As for the race, the only thing he worried about was the restarts saying “the cautions at the end of the day got me nervous.”

Gordon who led laps 239-243 couldn’t keep up Johnson at the end. “On the restarts we were trying to make it interesting for the 48 because no one else could.” Talking about Johnson he added, “they’re in another category.”

Montoya who led 78-laps (second to Johnson’s 128) said, “it's incredible. I have four top-fives in a row and I'm losing points to the leader."

Mark Martin, who fell out of the points lead, finished fourth

The race might have gone to pole sitter Denny Hamlin but on a restart on lap 190 he moved to the left to block Juan Pablo Montoya, who got a push from Jimmie Johnson. Hamlin’s Toyota was spun around striking the end of the pit wall suffering serious damage to his car.

Hamlin admitted it was partially his fault –“I thought I was clear and I misjudged it. I got to apologize to the team, they deserve better than that. They got me out front; it was a bad mistake.”

The race as red flagged, for 22 minutes, for big crash with six laps to go. It was all Johnson after that and, according to Gordon it might as well be Johnson’s fourth straight title since “they have something magical about the final ten races.”